NASA's Juno Spacecraft Snaps Rare Picture Of Earth, Moon (PHOTO)

(AP/Huffington Post) PASADENA, Calif. -- Earth, say cheese. A NASA spacecraft cruising toward Jupiter glanced back and snapped a rare picture of Earth and the moon. Taken last week when Juno was 6,000,000 miles away, the image shows two white dots, one brighter than the other.

The solar-powered Juno blasted off earlier this month on a five-year journey to Jupiter. Though previous craft have visited the giant gas planet, Juno will get closer than ever before, flying within 3,100 miles of the dense cloud tops to learn more about Jupiter's origins.

The $1.1 billion mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

"This is a remarkable sight people get to see all too rarely," said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in a statement. "This view of our planet shows how Earth looks from the outside, illustrating a special perspective of our role and place in the universe. We see a humbling yet beautiful view of ourselves."

LOOK:

NASA writes of the image, "This image of Earth (on the left) and the moon (on the right) was taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2011, when the spacecraft was about 6 million miles (9.66 million kilometers) away. It was taken by the spacecraft's onboard camera, JunoCam. The solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Aug. 5 to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter."

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Online:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

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Comments

[Enzo Ferrari]

10:38 AM on 09/02/2011

2 White dots on a black background ?
That's the amazing picture ?
1.1 Billion dollars is a joke ! Its more economical to pay NASA employees to do nothing and save the rest of that money.

[White Raven]

06:25 AM on 09/02/2011

Reminds me of Carl Sagan's soliloquy on the Pale Blue Dot.

[hackitoff]

09:25 PM on 09/01/2011

Juno spacecraft to Nasa - when do I have to make theat left turn my GPS doesn't work out here (:

[GrantS]

09:19 PM on 09/01/2011

Looks like a concussion victim to me.

[waterbuffalo]

09:02 PM on 09/01/2011

If not for NASA, earth would still have been flat in some tea party state's science books.

[ScooterBob]

08:51 PM on 09/01/2011

There now...can we have your liver?

[leftybass]

08:44 PM on 09/01/2011

And I thought nothing could make John Boehner seem even smaller as a man.

[MathIsTruth]

08:38 PM on 09/01/2011

Perspective.

Big Time.

[americaisracist]

08:33 PM on 09/01/2011

very cool!

[marywooo]

08:15 PM on 09/01/2011

opps, my mapquest search went awry..

[humuhumunukunukuapuaa]

08:04 PM on 09/01/2011

Humbling.

[canadaloki]

09:09 PM on 09/01/2011

Yes it is. Very.

[Mary Sue Mc Cormick]

08:02 PM on 09/01/2011

What amazes me is that humans believe that we are all-important beings when, in fact, we are just so very small compared just to our part of the universe!
If there are intelligent beings out there then I hope to Heaven that they are smart enough to stay away from us. We would just be stupid enough to think we could take them on...and they would wipe up the universe with us!

[J P P]

07:44 PM on 09/01/2011

Space, the universe and just plain 'old' existence has always amazed me. What amazes me even more is that in such a small and insignificant part of the universe (Earth), very small but relatively significant men (and sometimes women, but mostly men) and their greed determine the very unfortunate fate of billions. Given the collective wealth of the occidental world, hunger should no longer exist and people should not have to worry about feeding, clothing and sheltering themselves in any part of the world. Perhaps, I am a day-dreaming, commie socialist academic-in-training entertainer of utopian ideas... But to paraphrase Mr. Spock's Vulcan logic: The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the (greedy) few.

[bccmeteorites]

08:05 PM on 09/01/2011

We cannot insure the world is clothed and fed using an old unsustainable fake economic model.

[CoronaDischarge]

07:43 PM on 09/01/2011

Wish they had announced when they were taking the picture, so I could have tidied up the lawn a bit.

[MathIsTruth]

08:37 PM on 09/01/2011

That's the least of your worries.  You have some spinach stuck to your teeth.

[CoronaDischarge]

10:19 PM on 09/01/2011

No, I think that was the day I had a kale and arugula salad.

[eMJayy]

07:33 PM on 09/01/2011

Awesome pic!

The amazing thing is that it actually takes 1.3 seconds for light to move from one of those tiny dots to the other. And the light reflected from the Earth and Moon took about 32 seconds to get to the satellite's camera. Just goes to show how slow light speed really is in the grand scheme of things.

[canadaloki]

09:13 PM on 09/01/2011

I gave you the geek badge. It's a compliment. Cheers